Huevos Rancheros, Salsa and Tequila Sunrises

Mark here...just updating some old recipes...This is from the Friday Night Lights episode, "El Accidente"...First off is Mark Bittman's Huevos Rancheros, his Refried Beans and Salsa recipes follows...

Huevos Rancheros

Ingredients

1/2 cup of grapeseed oil
4 5-inch tortillas (I use flour)
Real refried beans
1 tablespoon butter
4 eggs
salt and pepper
Salsa
grated monterey jack cheese
chopped cilantro

Preheat oven to 350.

Cook the tortillas in the heated grapeseed oil, a few minutes each side and then dry on paper towels.  Spoon a tablespoon of the beans into the center of each tortilla.

Melt the butter in a separate skillet and add the eggs.  Cook until translucent and add salt and pepper to taste. Add an egg to each tortilla and top with salsa and cheese.  Transfer to a baking dish and cook in the oven 5 minutes.  Top with the cilantro

Real Refried Beans

Ingredients

1/4 cup grapeseed oil
3-4 cups drained (liquid reserved) black beans (my choice)
1 large chopped onion
1 tablespoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
salt and pepper
chopped cilantro

Heat the oil in a skillet and add the beans. Gently mash with a fork or spoon.  Add the onion, cumin and cayenne, and salt and pepper to taste.  Continue to cook until onions are cooked.  Add some of the reserved bean liquid if the mixture is too pasty.  Add cilantro at the end.

Salsa

Ingredients

2 chilies (I picked 2 at random that weren't too spicy, but I'd choose to taste)
1/4 cup grapeseed oil
2 chopped onions
4 chopped garlic cloves
3 cups canned chopped tomatoes
1 tablespoon sugar
salt and pepper
chopped cilantro
3 tablespoons lime juice

Finely chop the chiles.  Heat the oil in a skillet and add the chiles, onions and garlic and stir.  Cook about 5 minutes before adding tomatoes, sugar, salt and pepper.  Cook 20 minutes before adding cilantro and lime juice.

Tequila Sunrise

Ingredients

good Tequila
Orange Juice
Grenadine

This is about one part tequila, two parts orange juice, mixed in a glass or pitcher.  Once in a glass though, add a teaspoon of grenadine to the center, letting it drip off the spoon and drop to the bottom of the glass.  Do not stir and you will get the sunrise effect.

El Accidente

Hi Laurel here...Mark and I are sitting down to a delicious brunch and more FNL.   Mark made Mark Bittman's huevos rancheros with tequila sunrise cocktails.  The huevos are so good!  Mark even made the salsa from scratch.

So this episode there's more trouble with Voodoo.  The football players are all waiting to hear if they are going to be stripped of their victory over Arnett Mead.  There's accusations of illegally recruiting Voodoo, and he played a bit that game.  If he's deemed ineligible they will lose the win.  To add insult to injury as you may recall he played terrible that game, was totally insubordinate to Coach Taylor.   Now they might forfeit because of him?

Also Voodoo stirs up a bunch of trouble this episode.  He runs into the team at their hangout and calls Reyes a wetback, but Riggins steps in and stops the fight that was about to go down.  However Reyes is still riled up and ends up taking it out on this kid Castor (friends with Landry and Saracen) in the parking lot, and puts him in the hospital.  Reyes is then arrested for assault, and resorts to lying about the incident saying (on television) that Castor called him racist names.  Matt is in a tough position because he doesn't want to get Reyes in trouble but he knows that Reyes is lying about his friend.  In the end he decides (with some pushing from Landry) to tell Coach Taylor what he knows and Reyes is kicked off the team.  I think more for lying than for beating the Castor up, if he had admitted his mistake in the first place I think he would have been punished but could have kept his spot.  In the end it's all for nothing, Voodoo ends up telling a reporter that he had been illegally recruited and they are stripped of their victory over Arnett Mead anyhow.  On the plus side Voodoo has left to go back to Louisiana so he won't be around to screw things up anymore.

Also this episode Riggins breaks Jason out of the rehab center for a field trip, Lila runs into them in the parking lot and ends up coming along.  Awkward!  They have agreed they don't ever want Jason to know that they hooked up while he was in the hospital but the truth has a way of coming out...

Mark here...I agree with what Laurel said.  The clincher at the end of the episode is that after Jason gets dropped off at the rehab center he watches his friends (Lyla and Riggs) hug from the window.  We get the impression that he sees something more between the two of them.

The plotline with Reyes and Castor is interesting in how other characters respond to it.  Tammi Taylor doesn't buy Reyes accusation from the beginning.  The coach wants to believe that Reyes wouldn't lie to him, though you get the impression that he knows the truth.  Saracen hems and haws over telling the truth but in the end he comes clean.

We also get a brief scene between Tyra and Tammi Taylor in the guidance office.  Tammi tries to identify with Tyra saying, "I was once like you..." to inspire her to keep up with her algebra.  Tyra of course says "I don't want to be you!".  Its interesting because Tammi Taylor doesn't flinch and still feels sympathy for Tyra. At the same time, you can see Tyra growing up to be Tammi.